The Adventures of Lucy Weasley, Girl Wizard
by Luna Rapunzel
Summary: It's 2017, and fourth year Slytherin Lucy Weasley is drowning in Muggle pop culture at a postmodern and rapidly globalizing Hogwarts. At least now she's got Al Severus in tow to abuse (and maybe to keep her company, too). M for language and some sexual themes.
1. Draco Malfoy the Amazing Bouncing Ferret

**A/N:** I don't even know what this is. I wrote this in one sitting, and it was supposed to be crack, but now it's something else. Credit to mugglebornheadcanon for a few of the quips and Tumblr at large for the general idea of abusing Al's name, and shoutout to my friend Katie for the conversation that prompted this!

x

 **The Adventures of Lucy Weasley, Girl Wizard**

x

 **Chapter 1: Draco Malfoy, the Amazing Bouncing Ferret**

This time around, the ceremony hasn't even _ended_ before the midgets start hassling us for the Wi-Fi password. I swear to God, I'm still in the middle of clapping for this one freshly Sorted girl, Bathilda something, when she flops down next to me at the Slytherin table and asks me for it without so much as a hello-how-are-you. Like, really, you might want to learn some manners while you're trying to figure out what to do with yourself without your smart phone to keep you company at night.

I sigh and fold my arms across my chest because it's too damn awkward to keep applauding, even though I'm supposed to. According to the profs, the newbies stopped choosing Slytherin pretty quick after the Second War was over; within a decade, the house had barely half the population of the others, and our numbers are still dwindling. "'DracoMalfoytheAmazingBouncingFerret394,' no spaces, capital D, capital M, _lowercase_ T—"

"Hold on, you said the amazing—Draco Malfoy, that's spelled—? Hang on a sec, my phone's still searching for networks…"

I snicker a little with McLaggen, and when the girl starts asking whether I know if Vodafone usually gets good reception around here, I mutter, "I _really_ wouldn't say it does, Bathilda."

"Damn. I'd text my parents to change my provider, but lol. You lot use owls to send your mail, right?"

"In a minute. This is my cousin here up next," I tell her. Sure enough, I may have only half-heard Slughorn call his name, but Al's practically tiptoeing from the mass of first years up to the Sorting Hat's stool, and I can see the beet-red flush of his ears and neck even from here.

"It's Batool, not Bathilda, by the way—"

But I shush her, flapping my hands, before swiveling around and swinging my legs to the other side of the bench. Just in time, too: the brim of the hat's barely grazed Al's hair before it bellows, "SLYTHERIN!"

I let out a breath I hadn't realized I was holding as McLaggen claps me on the back and Smith hollers from across the table, "Nice one, Weasley!"

Ripping my throat raw with cheers, I even catch myself on my feet for a second there as Al's setting the hat back down and booking it toward our table. It'll be nice not to be the only Slytherin in the family anymore, seeing as it's not like I'm best buds with any of these screwballs and the Weasleys are a giant ass family to be alone in.

Cupping my hands around my mouth, I bellow, "Over here, Al!" and as soon as his frantic eyes find me, he practically breaks into a sprint to catch up to me. "Budge up, Tabitha," I tell the new girl, who rolls her eyes and shoves the kid next to her with her bum to make room. "This is Al Potter, my cousin. Albus Severus Lucius Rodolphus Potter."

"Shut the hell up, Lucy," says Al.

It's going to be an _excellent_ year. I can feel it.

x

If anything makes me wish the dad-ancestor loved Muggles the way Granddad Weasley does, it's Transfiguration. Maybe then he would have enrolled me in Muggle grade school, and I'd be right up there in the top half of the class with the Muggle-borns who showed up in first year actually, properly prepared to learn pre-algebra.

To my credit, I at least had the good sense not to sign up for Arithmancy, even though the dad-ancestor was railing hard for me to do it. But I've poked around Dom's textbook before when I was trying to get an idea of what electives to enroll in last year, and honestly, even Arithmancy didn't look as bad as Transfiguration is, because it looks like just arithmetic at the introductory level. Sure, I'll bet it gets loads more complicated as you go on, but it at least goes easy on you in the beginning, apparently. Bit of a respite, bit of a refresher, before you get to the _really_ nasty stuff.

Transfiguration, not so much. I swear to God that not even Muggle kids have to learn maths this fast in secondary school because on the first day of class the prof's got us deriving proofs and the Muggle-borns are saying that's physics and pre-calc that Muggles don't get taught until whatever the hell year. When they're like seventeen. Maybe sixteen. I'm barely fourteen and don't have a clue what I'm copying down. I dunno yet what the hell career I'm going to go into, but I hope whatever it is doesn't require a N.E.W.T. in Transfiguration because sixth year is when you have to start doing calc-based physics to keep up and I just don't even have the patience for that rubbish. Lord knows I'll have enough trouble just trying to pass my O.W.L. in it next year.

The problem—well, I guess probably one of the coolest turnarounds McGonagall brought to the table when she got bumped up to Headmistress—but what still usually feels like a _problem_ with McGonagall and her curriculum overhauls is that she wanted us to go back to the fundamentals and learn the stuff Muggles do that got left out of the ancestors' generation's educations. And I get it, I do, the prof told us _all_ about it in History of Magic—how not knowing maths and how to price things jacked up the economy and not knowing physics stopped new spells from being written for a long time and whatever else. We do literary analysis in Muggle Studies now, which is sort of cool, especially when it's fantasy and we actually know enough from all our classes now to be able to talk about the discrepancies between reality and Muggle misconceptions about magic and trace them back to the Statute of Secrecy or to communication failures even before then between wizards and Muggles that we learn about in History of Magic. And spelling and potioneering would be the coolest things of my life if I had the stamina to stick with Transfiguration that long. Potions I'm going to try and ride out—Slughorn's a good time, and the chemistry is enough of a bastard child of physics that I can follow along decently enough—but it sucks balls that Transfiguration's the class that got pegged for spelling. I get it, the correlation makes sense, but there's no way I can stay with it that long, and it's too bad, honestly.

From what Slughorn's said of it, spelling's sort of like computer programming in the Muggle world, if you know anything about how that works. Magic's like this consciousness—okay, well, _that_ part's not like coding—but like this energy reservoir that's got this sentience to it that I don't really understand, and people with the magic gene can tap into it to channel it through their wands to make, well, _magic_ happen. I dunno; Slughorn said something about something called thermodynamics and how, for Muggles, doing work uses up energy and then makes it like unusable in the future and _they_ think it's leading to this thing called heat death, but what the Muggles don't know is that magic can take that used-up energy and reset it, sort of. Like, there's this thing called entropy— _that_ I actually followed—this property that means that everything in the world is naturally moving from order to disorder, like how you set off Peruvian darkness powder and it's naturally going to expand outward into the air, or how no matter how many times you clean your room it's always going to get messy again. But magic means you can flick your wand and maybe say a few words to refold the socks and un-break the teacup and put things in order again.

Only it's actually more complicated than a couple of words—that's where spelling comes in. And you can do it in any language—apparently wizards in other cultures have totally different words to do the same spells as us, or sometimes totally different words to do totally different spells from us, too, depending on how they developed it before globalization started happening and we all compared notes—but root magic is supposed to be all about using the language of magic to like feel the consciousness and speak to it to get into it. Learning the language and composing the sentences to say is the deepest layer of spelling, actually, but the type of spelling you usually learn first is the level where you can do stuff to assign words to these huge, intricate spells to act like a shortcut to having to say this big paragraph to do what you want. That's why something like _Levicorpus_ that _sounds_ really arbitrary can do something specific like swinging somebody upside down by the ankle—somebody coded it to do that, basically.

Sometimes I feel like maybe I would've made a good Ravenclaw. But all the Death Eater brats choose Ravenclaw now because they're too scared of what the upperclass Gryffindors would do to them if they wound up in Slytherin looking like God forbid they took after their ancestors too much, and I don't care how many cousins I've got in there or what Aunt Hermione says about unity; I don't want them mixed up with me.

At any rate, I'm probably not smart enough to be cut out for Ravenclaw. Those common room riddles? Forget it. Let alone goddamn blasted _Transfiguration_.

By the time we move on past proofs into the day's practical work—cockroaches into beetles—I haven't got a clue what any of the equations I'm writing mean. I'll pester Dom about it later. Uncle Bill and Aunt Fleur had the good sense to enroll her in grade school as a kid.

x

Maybe I'm just being my insecure self again, but seeing as Friday night's the first I see of Al since the Sorting Ceremony, it definitely _feels_ like he's been avoiding me. "So what's your deal—too ashamed to be a Slytherin seen in public with another Slytherin? We're _family_."

He flinches when I surprise him with a cuff on the shoulder, and his muscles stay tensed even as I plunk myself down cross-legged on the floor and tilt my head up to his perch in his chair in our common room. "I'm not ashamed of _you_ ," says Al, but he has a tell that he's showing tonight: from his cheeks to his collarbone, he always goes all blotchy—a patchwork quilt of red blush with white pallor—when he's uncomfortable.

"Half this house is Muggle-born anymore. _Look_ at them."

We both look. Al flails his head around like he's scared of getting hexed by a Death Eater brat if he keeps his gaze on any one person for too long, but I hone in—on the girl wizard selling tampons to purebloods at two Galleons a pop (for real! _two Galleons_!); on the bloke telling a fervent newbie that the Wi-Fi password's 'DracoMalfoytheChosenCaptain' if only his phone could connect to the network already.

"The brats all pick Ravenclaw instead of Slytherin now," I reassure him. "Nobody's going to think worse of you for being here. Haven't you gotten to know any of them yet?"

He shrugs a little and rubs the back of his neck. Can't blame the kid, really. They may not be what Al's scared they'll be, but there's still a lot of cutthroat bastards, like me, for example.

"It took the Sorting Hat about a millisecond to know you'd fit in here, Al. It's got to have a solid reason for that."

"Was it that short for you, too?"

"No, it…" I begin, and then my mouth hangs open stupidly for a few seconds there as I grasp around for a way to put whatever the Hat did to me into words.

It was long, yeah. Maybe not so long that it counted as a Hatstall, but long enough to make me sweat like a little bitch and make me grateful I'd changed out of my Muggle clothes into robes loose enough not to get pit stains. I can't say the efforts to block it out have _worked_ , exactly, but memories have a way of getting fuzzier and fuzzier the more times you bastardize them into fresh iterations, and that's helped blur out the dialogue, anyway. I catch myself wondering whether it would be any distorted in a Pensieve before remembering that either way you wouldn't be able to hear from the outside a conversation I had in my head.

"Took maybe like three or four minutes. Ran circles around everything but Hufflepuff until finally winding up here," I say after a while.

"Dad said I'd have a choice," Al mumbles. "He said if I really didn't want to end up… someplace, the Hat would listen to what I had to say before making up its mind."

That sweet summer child, thinking dads aren't wrong sometimes. "Buck up, Albus Severus Remus Nymphadora Hedwig. Slytherin's all right now. And you've got me."

It's not like we've ever talked much: Aunt Ginny keeps them well away from the dad-ancestor; honestly, the whole clan keeps well away, especially Uncle George. We didn't even hear about the baby until two weeks ago, when the sister-Molly got home from her sleepover with Grammy Molly and boasted about Angelina stopping by and letting her feel the baby kicking inside of her, four months along now, or maybe five. The sister-Molly is just like the dad-ancestor, except where he derives pride from working in middle management at the Ministry, she takes it in winning people's favor and hogging their confidence. Little prick.

Honestly, I can't blame the rest of them for keeping us the hell out, even if the feeling's not mutual. Dom's cool to me, though, when I seek her out, and I've always thought Al's a cutie. Maybe Slytherin'll force him to grow a pair so that we can be on par with each other.

x

If Transfiguration is the worst, then sex ed is the second worst.

It's a two-week, twice-weekly seminar. _My_ year are the guinea pigs, unfortunately, and Vector, who teaches Arithmancy, is the prof. She's ancient, but she's handling the thing with pretty impressive amounts of candor and humor. Fat load of good that does her, though, because the purebloods and half-bloods are all repressed and the Muggle-borns are slut-shamers like you've never seen in your life.

"I'm sure you're all expecting to start with the fun parts," Vector says with a smile, "but sorry to say, we won't be getting to the mechanics of sex until next class. We'll do a brief overview of anatomy—I know you've all mostly reached puberty by now, but you'd be surprised how much misinformation tends to circulate out there among those who've never heard a proper explanation—before talking advantages and disadvantages of safety charms and their Muggle alternatives, as well the mechanisms of pleasure and orgasm for both sexes— _yes_ , pleasure, Mister Smith, and don't let me catch you making that gesture again. For today, though, I'd like to start the discussion with ethics and, more specifically, with consent—"

"You've _got_ to be bullshitting us," interjects Hakim.

"Language, Miss Hakim, and I'm afraid I'm not. Actually, let's take a few minutes to reflect on the importance of doing so, if you'd like to help me out for a moment: can you tell me how familiar you are with wizarding law about rape and consent?"

"'Fraid I can't, Professor. I'm Muggle-born, _remember_?"

I shake my head when McLaggen leans in and tries to tell me, "Prof needs to check her pureblood privilege." I want to see how this plays out too badly to go at it with him right now.

Unfazed, Vector goes on, "And I'm sure even if you _did_ grow up in the wizarding world, you wouldn't be able to then, either: there's shockingly little legislation in place to defend victims of domestic and sexual violence. Understanding and respecting your partner's autonomy and the importance of consent is _the_ most important factor in carrying out a satisfying sexual relationship, whether casual or—"

"That the excuse you make for yourself when Professor McGonagall eats you out like a heathen in her office every weekend, Vicky? Consent's more important than morality?" busts in Smith.

We've all heard the rumors—heck, I've probably even spread the ones I've heard a bit further out—but still, I hadn't seen _that_ comment coming, not directed straight at the subject like that. Vector's momentarily spared from responding, however, because a large barn owl chooses that moment to hurtle through the window and unleash a Howler that promptly rickrolls one very pissed-off Edwin McCann.

"Gold star, Vicky, you tried," whispers McLaggen.

"I need to get laid," I groan.

Raising his eyebrows, he asks, "You taking volunteers for that?"

Oh, why the hell not—and so we cut Charms afterward and use the password he got off Jordan to hack into the prefects' bathroom.

x

"Albus Severus Dippet Phineaus Nigellus, I think your fellow first year over there wants to ask you for the Wi-Fi password."

"I will hurt you," says Al.

"Bravest men your dad-ancestor knew."

"James is trying to crack it, you know," he tells me abruptly. "The ban on Muggle electricity, I mean. He reckons there's a workaround, even though it's not supposed to work around this much magic. It's all Muggle physics in the end, isn't it?" I shrug, and he adds, "And I don't get why you call them that. Ancestors."

It's because we're postmodern millennials, Al, hopped up on pop culture and bitching out Death Eaters and their brats the way that used to get first years Cruciatused by their profs a generation back. Once, I asked the dad-ancestor why Uncle George never comes to Christmas at Grammy and Granddad's, and he said he's got a whole swarm of dementors living in his head keeping him and Angelina in that flat all day—that everyone who survived the Second War does. Us, we drug up on Cheering Charms and don't look back up the family trees.


	2. Actual Worst Weasleys

**A/N:** This is apparently a multichapter now. God help me. Big thanks to **Wendy Brune** for the beta read, and please drop a review to let me know what you think!

x

 **Chapter 2: Actual Worst Weasleys**

Thank Jesus for Dom because I don't know how I could possibly stomach this Weasley reunion shit without her, I really, really don't.

I don't mean the ones at the Burrow. Those are a ball. My grandparents are just the sweetest little people you'll ever meet in your life. Granddad Weasley's radically uninterested in the cousin politics, and Grammy Molly's got a real disdain for it. Most of the cousins are the worst ever, but Granddad, Grammy, and Aunt Hermione always seem legitimately interested to hear me freak out about whatever we're reading in Muggle Studies while Grammy throws quadruple helpings of food at me. Even more than that, though, I like listening: to Uncle Ron's jokes and his bickering with Aunt Hermione, to Auntie Fleur's fussing, and to the stories—Uncle Bill's and Uncle Charlie's stories about other wizarding cultures and everybody's stories about the war. Uncle Harry tells the best ones, and the ancestors' aren't too bad, either, to be totally honest, because the dad-'stor was like a bloody self-employed secret agent in the Ministry for the whole last year of it, and the mum-'stor joined the D.A. under the Carrows and Headmaster Rapey Snapey. It does draw lots of attention to the ancestors' six-year age difference, which is awkward, but my aunts and uncles at least don't treat it like a big, weird thing. They met after the mum-ancestor dropped out of Hogwarts, through Aunt Ginny, who was in her year at school.

Nah, going to the Burrow is a grand old time; it's the ones up at school that are the massive problem. They're the sister-Molly's little pet project, of _course_. I swear, that girl should have been the one in Slytherin more than me, even. I can _kind_ of see it: she's got that bighead Gryffindor ego thing going for her where she thinks she's right about everything and anybody who doesn't line up deserves dishonor on their cow and all this stuff. But she's _all_ about honing connections, like her two life aspirations are basically to get crowned Slug Club Prom Princess and for Grammy Molly to peg her as the next Weasley Christmas host in her will, and she's just the exact same person as the dad-ancestor. The two of them would have been two peas in a snake pod if the Sorting Hat knew what it was doing, which obviously it doesn't because it's a pushover around anybody who, A, doesn't take it seriously the way I did and, B, takes longer than the five and a half milliseconds it spent on Al's head. Straight up, I'll bet you anything Molly picked Gryffindor because it'd be best for her reputation, just as much as I'll bet that the dad-ancestor picked it because he didn't have the guts to write home with any other verdict. How's that for irony, right? He proved himself in the end there with the Ministry mole thing, I guess, but it _took_ him long enough.

Anyway, though, yeah, so in this whole effort to prove herself a worthy heir apparent to the Christmas party, Molly does this thing where she rounds us all up every month or two for dinner with these fancy invitations by owl and everything, as if she needs to hassle some poor school owl for nothing every month to dash around the Great Hall passing them out to validate that she's a budding grownup or something. Seriously? _Seriously_ , I feel like it wouldn't be that hard to just flit around the Hall for all of five minutes to do it herself and save the poor creatures the unnecessary labor. The dad-ancestor spectacles and the feathery little brown bob cut she's rocking make her _look_ practically enough like an owl to pass for one.

She didn't waste any time with it this year, either; school's only been in session for two weeks by the time the first powwow rolls around. Today's festivities are going down out by the lake, where Molly's commandeered the ground below that big beech tree for a picnic. We don't all fit on the blanket, which is annoyingly Gryffindor scarlet. It's like everything my sister does in my presence is a tactical slap in the face. Either I'm wrong and very narcissistic, or I'm right and she's the actual worst.

The numbers of us in other houses are starting to even out, though, thank God. There's me and Al, and then we've got Dom in Hufflepuff and Louie and Rose in Ravenclaw, poor things. Well, Louie's all right—he doesn't give a damn what anybody thinks of him, which really isn't surprising, just look at who he's got for parents—but Rosie's not holding up great, from the looks of it. Hilariously, she and Al are pretty much actively jealous of where each other ended up. You should hear them going at it at this picnic right now, I _swear_ to God.

Oh, right, allow me:

"…Just scared because Dad jokes about disowning anyone Sorted into Slytherin. Lucy's in Slytherin, and she and Dad get along beautifully, don't you, Lucy?"

Good thing I chose now to tune back in. "Peas in a bloody pod," I say tonelessly, absently ripping out and shredding a fistful of grass.

But Al insists, " _You're_ not there. None of you are up there in the dormitory to hear them whispering about how the _famous Harry Potter_ must be so ashamed of me."

Shaking her head, Dom says, "Don't listen to them, Al; they're just fishing for drama, same as people do everywhere."

"And anyway," Rose continues, her voice rising into a squeak, "nobody _bad_ even gets put in Slytherin anymore. I'm the one with Scorpius stupid Malfoy in my house and year, and he already hates me, like it's all my fault that his stupid dad is the butt of everybody's jokes all over the castle. I didn't ask my dad and his dad to hate each other. That's been going on since they were _our_ age."

"At least Ravenclaw is supposed to be about intellect. Your house stands for something admirable. What's there to admire about only being out for yourself?"

"Getting driven and fulfilled from wanting to do something productive with yourself is just as respectable as anything else the other three stand for. It's all fueled by this cultural insecurity that anybody who wants a career is doing it for the power they get over other people," says Dom. Love her so much. "You just never got exposed to any other mentality about it because everybody who raised you is still living in the cult of Dumbledore—"

But James gleefully interrupts, "You're going to hurt his _feelings_ if you keep trashing his namesake in front of him. Poor widdle Albus Severus Minerva Poppy Irma Potter."

"I will _hurt_ you," says Al in disgust.

"Dominique," Vic says before James can retort, "the incentive to exist in order to produce is the most capitalistic drivel I have heard all week." She shakes beachy tendrils of hair out of her face as she bends forward to fix herself another slice of mushroom bruschetta.

"Right little anti-hipster you are," Louie remarks airily.

Leave it to Molly to bring bruschetta to a picnic. You see what I'm dealing with here? I almost feel bad for her—almost—because she's so out of her element with the cousins: she and Vic have the pretentious thing in common, yeah, but it's a damn loud group with opinions that can't be squashed into little boxes for manners, and none of them really _like_ her the way she's gotten the elders to fawn over her and her sucking up. Of course, none of them like me, either, and she hasn't been much help in that department, so it's hard to muster up too much pity. At least Dom likes me, although then again Dom likes everyone, and then I'm still working on Al—slowly, might I add, since he's definitely, definitely avoiding me. It has to be the Slytherin thing, which is just… dumb, honestly, and counterproductive, when you think about it. It's going to be a long-ass seven years for him if he doesn't make some allies and learn how to live peaceably in that tousled head of his.

It's inconvenient I don't like chipping in much around the Weasley when the elders aren't around, because if being forcibly thrust halfway onto a blanket together by Molly is going to be the only times I ever see him, that's not going to be much of an opportunity to get to know each other. Wish I had cousins here on the mum-ancestor's side. I mean, I have _cousins_ on the Renault side, but they're all Muggles, and that's hard with the whole International Statute of Secrecy crackdown going on.

Thankfully, Louie chooses this moment to notice that it's almost two o'clock, which means Muggle Matinee Hour on the WWN. Molly fishes her radio out of her bag and dicks around with the dials for a hot minute, and before you know it, James is bitching loudly about how sick he's getting of Adele's crooning, and Vic is defending her honor, and Dom's hoisting me up to my feet to dance.

x

Dance party runs overtime, so I end up having to bail early so that I can douse myself in a nice Disillusionment Charm and set off for The Three Broomsticks in time to meet Angelina. So we're sitting here chugging butterbeers, and she keeps on giving me these looks like she knows I was lying about it being a Hogsmeade weekend. The place would be a lot more crowded with people a lot closer to my age if it were, and I don't think McGonagall's ever scheduled one this early in the term before, so it doesn't exactly take Auror-level powers of deduction to figure it out. I _mean_ I'm surprised Angelina said yes in the first place when I owled her about meeting up with her here. Not like she knows me well enough to owe me any loyalty—I like all my aunts and uncles better than they like me, I'll bet you anything, and anyway Angelina and Uncle George don't get out of the house much to even come see the family at the Burrow, and for that matter Angelina's technically not even my aunt, even if she's as good as one, since she and Uncle George haven't gotten married or anything. And she doesn't know my mum-ancestor much, and she doesn't like the dad-ancestor much, so it's not like we have this big parental connection, either. Maybe she feels sorry for me. Maybe she thinks we can feel sorry for each other together, except actually, I don't feel sorry for Angelina at all. Wish I could be more like her and not care what everybody thinks.

She doesn't mention the part where I'm out here illicitly—and I'm not about to take crap for that anyway, honestly, because you wouldn't believe how hard it is getting out of the castle after the admins found all the secret passages during the Second War and I put in _effort_ to spend time with the woman—but when she's done letting me talk about sex ed and James trying to set up Wi-Fi and what a little prick my sister is, she does ask, "So what's the reason you wanted to meet up, Lucy?"

It's a fair question. Embarrassing, maybe, but fair. I push my mug in circles around the table a little and tell her, "I just hate them so much. All the Weasleys at school except for Dom are _terr_ ible, and we're all assholes in Slytherin, which is great but sort of—isolating sometimes, I don't know."

"Honey, you aren't an asshole," says Angelina gently, but I shake my head and say, "No, but I am, but it's great, though. We just all abuse each other and don't have to worry about, you know, like social codes or anything. Not like with Molly, or my dad-ancestor, who's just…"

Smiling, she supplies, "I know Percy's a handful, but he does love you very much. Even if he has a hard time with the dad stuff—"

"Oh, believe me, he does," I say.

Angelina laughs and takes a swig of butterbeer. "I know he seems stiff, but he's doing his best. I think it's probably harder for him to talk to you and your sister than it is for the two of you."

"He and _Molly_ get along just fine. She's practically an exact replica. She's basically a female, social climbing version of him."

"Talking to you, then. I think what might be giving him trouble is that you're not inhibited like he is."

That, maybe, but probably more so the fact that I'm so irreverent. I like to think it's one of my defining qualities. Not all the time—I've got mad respect for the war fighters—but unlike the ancestors, I get that the world doesn't care about who's got how much PTSD anymore, and I can roll with that just fine.

Well, most of the time, I roll with it. I guess my personal exception there would be Uncle George and Angelina, huh?

When I ask her how he's doing—all casual-like, but she probably sees through that, too—her mouth darkens, and she starts bouncing one of her legs. "I think he's holding up a little better lately. He's started going back to work at the joke shop a couple of days a week, and being with Ron is always good for him. He says he wants to pull things together a little for when the baby comes, and he might be being a little over-ambitious about his limitations, but…"

"Has he been seeing the Healer still?"

"No, he stopped going in after something like three or four appointments. They don't train them the same way they train Muggle therapists—wizards are awful at learning anything that doesn't involve magic—but he couldn't see a Muggle about it, not with the Statute of Secrecy still in place. Can you imagine trying to work through your emotional baggage and leave out the fact you're a wizard? It's in every aspect of our lives."

"I heard in the _Daily Prophet_ that they've been gaining support for a bill to ditch the Statute of Secrecy," I remember suddenly.

Amused, Angelina remarks, "You're reading the _Prophet_ now?"

"Yeah, I took out a subscription at the beginning of the school year. Also one for _The Quibbler_ because you can count on Xeno more than them to be honest about what's up, but the ratio of actual news to whack-job stuff every month isn't the most reliable thing in the world, so I thought I should get both to be safe." I can feel my damn face starting to heat up.

"You might want to try _Witch Weekly_ if you're taking your politics seriously," says Angelina. "It still has recipes and rubbish every issue, but what people don't talk about is that the main features are all on strong witches these days. They did a great profile on your Aunt Hermione's work at the Ministry a few months back—I can mail you my copy to borrow, if you'd like."

"Sure, that sounds cool."

"That's my girl," Angelina says. It's nice being somebody's girl. Not like I've got anything of that magnitude going on for myself up at the castle. "But to get back to what you were saying—yes, there's getting to be a lot of demand to abolish the Statute, but so far that's mostly celebrity and popular support. No one in Magical Law Enforcement has worked up the courage yet to draft and spearhead an actual bill for it, I think because they're afraid of what the consequences might be. But if you ask me, at the rate we're going, it's getting to be more complicated trying to uphold the Statute than it would be to iron the kinks out of a plan to end it. I hear it's a nightmare for the Obliviators trying to erase all the record and memories of Muggle-born kids when they turn eleven and then stay on top of keeping the rest of us under the radar."

"My thing is like with how Molly and I basically got cut off from our Squib uncle on the mum-ancestor's side after he got married and had his kids. That's a whole mess with all the laws about what Muggle relatives are or aren't allowed to know and which ones have to have their memories wiped. Don't tell Granddad Weasley, but I wouldn't want to marry a Muggle _ever_ if the laws don't change; I wouldn't want to cut anybody off from their family."

"No, we can't fault each other for that," muses Angelina.

She offers to meet me again here next Saturday, and I swing by the far edge of the village before leaving to read up on BBC and Tumblr on my usually-defunct phone. No way I'll catch up on all the Muggle news or my entire dash before I've got to go back and work on my essay for Charms, but hey, I'll take what I can get when I get a chance to step out of the wizarding vacuum that is our collective lives for a couple hours.


	3. One of These Things Is Unlike the Others

**A/N:** Thanks to **Wendy Brune** for beta reading and to everyone who reviewed last time! I've been trying to post new chapters every two weeks, but to finagle around some scheduling constraints toward the end of July/beginning of August, it's probably going to be three weeks before Chapter 4 goes up and another three before Chapter 5, so just a heads-up about that. Also, rating has been bumped to M for slightly more explicit sexual content in this chapter.

Please let me know what you think!

x

 **Chapter 3: One of These Things Is Not Like the Others**

Angelina's copy of the profile on Aunt Hermione comes in the post on Tuesday morning, which is super convenient because I usually sleep through breakfast on Sunday and Monday—Sunday because I don't believe in getting out of bed in the A.M. unless absolutely necessary and Monday because _nope_. Tuesdays go better because I always pass out at eight or nine on Monday nights and it's like this nice hard reset on my sleep debt. Also, this term, I have Muggle Studies and Potions both on Tuesday mornings. Muggle Studies is just about the only class you could stick immediately after breakfast to motivate me not to skive off, and then even though Potions is Potions, Slughorn's a sweetie. I get why everybody else thinks he's kind of skeezy and plays favorites, and I'm not even going to waste my time trying to deny the favoritism part, but he gives me career advice and doesn't like my sister, and I'm _all_ in favor of anybody who doesn't like Molly.

Anyway, it's actually really cool, the stuff in _Witch Weekly_ about Aunt Hermione. I mean, a lot of the stuff I knew already—that she's Deputy Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement over at the Ministry, that she did a bunch of stuff with elf rights before that, and then obviously everything with Uncle Harry and Uncle Ron in the Second War—but I don't know, it's a lot different reading about it. I knew she was _important_ , but she doesn't act all hoity-toity about it when it's Christmas dinner and she's bitching about red tape at the Ministry with spinach caught in her teeth.

I've just hit the part about why she transferred out of the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures when McLaggen parks himself on the bench next to me and peers at the magazine over my shoulder. " _Witch Weekly_ , Weasley, really? I wouldn't have pegged you as the manicures and Celestina Warbeck type, but _o_ kay."

"Shut up, it's about my aunt," I say. I feel myself tensing up and scoot a couple centimeters away from him down the bench.

We haven't actually talked about the thing since we did the thing. You know. I'd done stuff before, but not with him—well, I'd done _stuff_ with McLaggen, but only if you define "stuff" as that time we were trying to jinx the toilet in the Hogwarts Express loo and he kissed me. Okay, seriously, though, it wasn't as nasty as I know that sounds. We were kind of pressed up together in there because nobody had had the good sense to put an Undetectable Extension Charm on the bathroom, and we were dicking around joking about whatever, and then the train like lurched around a sharp corner or whatever, I don't even know, and he kind of fell on top of me and we got all smushed up on top of each other against the wall, and I made some dumb joke, and there was this big pause where he wouldn't stop looking at me and I felt kind of jittery noticing how red his lips were and then I noticed them getting all close to mine and _yeah_. This was third year on the train either before or after Christmas break, I don't remember, but I think it must have been after because I'd probably have been stressing out about that the whole time at the Burrow if it'd been before and I don't remember having any anxiety last Christmas, or at least any anxiety beyond the usual bout of it I always get from having to share a bedroom with Molly _and_ Vic _and_ Dom. I like Dom, but that's just too many people in one former closet, I'm sorry.

And then he never brought the kissing up again, and I never brought the kissing up again, and then I got a girlfriend and that was a thing for the rest of third year until I found out Chandra had been cheating on me with that asshat Jessica Vane from my house but a year up. So I ditched the bastard—newt eyes were thrown and Jelly-Legs Jinxes were involved—and then didn't get laid all summer until McLaggen took me out of that particular misery last week.

Or he tried to do, anyway. I don't ask whether he gets up to any extracurricular action, but he's never had an S.O., and it _showed_. I told him hands only because herp, and I think he must be feeling really humiliated now that he's sat through Vector's lesson on the clitoris in sex ed because he clearly did _not_ know that penetration wasn't his only option when we were in that cupboard. To be fair, I was probably bad, too, but I think I should be exonerated by virtue of the lesbianism of my only ever relationship.

Anyway, he seemed really embarrassed about it right after and kept rubbing his arms and asking if I was okay and stuff. I told him I needed to pee and that I'd meet him downstairs for dinner after, except I didn't. I kept using more and more toilet paper like I thought I could wipe it all off or something, even though it was making the chafing from earlier worse, until the TP caught specks of red in it and I flushed and went down to the Great Hall and bothered Al instead. The next time I saw McLaggen was in class the next morning, and he was acting like it hadn't happened, so I did too.

I've been feeling kind of edgy about it, I guess, but it hasn't been like a problem or anything I can't handle. It's just uncomfortable when he sits too close to me or anything because then I feel funny and I'd rather avoid that. Like now. Hence the scooching away.

McLaggen doesn't seem to notice, which is either convenient or inconvenient depending how you look at it, and tries to make some dumbass small talk about his bigoted grandmother and her house-elves that I am just having none of right now. Like, clearly somebody in this conversation could benefit from reading this article, and it's not me. I'm just here for kicks. It's not anything Aunt Hermione wouldn't tell me about if I asked her, anyway.

I shake him off when breakfast's done, seeing as McLaggen's got Ancient Runes and I've got Muggle Studies, which as always turns out to be a grand old time. Prof Ingram passes back our last papers—I got an Acceptable; looks like she wasn't too impressed with my mad 3 A.M. critical thinking skills—but our homework from last time was to read this whacked-out Muggle sci-fi novel, so of course discussion eventually lands on everyone's favorite debate.

In the eloquent words of the Gryffindor bloke who brings it up: "I don't understand why they can't figure out a way so we can watch Muggle television at Hogwarts. I'm sick of reading books based on T.V. shows. What even is that, come on?"

Pursing her lips, Ingram says, "You know full well that is not a conscious decision on the parts of the staff, Stebbins. Around too much magic, electricity—"

"—Should work just fine," continues Stebbins. "Isn't that the whole point of Transfiguration theory? How magic and physics are the same thing?"

"They're not the _same_ thing. Magic—think of magic like a workaround to natural physics. Muggle inventions like electricity draw on energy like magic does, but in competition with it. So in a place like Hogwarts, with as many wizards as Hogwarts has, magic uses up all those resources—think how first years' cell phones fry up within a few hours of entering the castle."

Another girl chimes in, "But magic uses 'unusable' energy sources, right? Like, the stuff after an engine's been applied. So why would that have any effect on electricity when it's two different sources?"

"It's not the same source, Watkins, but the processes are similar enough that—"

"But that doesn't make _sense_ ," entreats Watkins.

Nodding, Stebbins adds, "It's got to be on purpose. Electricity is such a specific thing, out of all the things that use up energy, come on—"

"Okay, so say it's on purpose," I say, tilting my chair onto its back legs. "What about the Ministry? Electronics don't work there, either. I can sort of see them rocking a pureblood conspiracy type deal—you know, pre-Second War ending, if all the higher-ups didn't want their offices tarnished with Muggle shit—but the Ministry was the first wizarding building to install modern plumbing, too, and they took that from Muggle-land."

"It's true," says Ellington from the back of the classroom. "Muggles did plumbing in their loos first. And my sister's phone literally burned up and got its screen all cracked after like an hour in the Ministry when she was there for her disciplinary hearing last summer; _Reparo_ didn't work when she got home, our parents had to buy her a new one."

"What did your sister have to go get disciplined for?" asks Stebbins.

"Underage Apparition—plus she tried taking our little brother Side-Along and got him Splinched pretty badly—but that's not the point—"

"No," says Prof Ingram, "it isn't. I'm sorry, but now is neither the time nor the place to be tossing out conspiracies about pureblood subjugation. This is _Muggle_ Studies."

"Because those aren't related at all," Hakim mutters.

Not appearing to hear her, Ingram adds, "And the only Muggle technology I'm interested in hearing about today is in the context of _Doctor Who_ novelizations. So let's get on with it, shall we?"

x

I finish the article on Aunt Hermione at the beginning of Potions while Slughorn's blathering on about the magical properties of caterpillars and their function in Shrinking Solutions. Potions is shaping up to be a little awkward this year, since the Rapey Snapey revision of _Magical Drafts and Potions_ came out this past summer and Slughorn seems weird about giving him credit for much of anything, let alone beating him at his own craft. I know they were at Hogwarts together for the last year or two of the Second War, and that was when everybody thought he was the ultimate worst and yadda yadda before Uncle Harry busted up that whole perception, so maybe he's just got some trouble letting that go. Dunno.

I'll say one thing for old Snape: his changes to the recipes have been making the whole student body eons better at potioneering. I guess his copy of the N.E.W.T.-level textbook got lost in the Req Room back when that was still a functioning thing, which is too damn bad, since it would've made my future life a hell of a lot easier. But some kid a couple years back got his whole trunk Vanished in a cleaning charm gone wrong and had to borrow textbooks from all the profs till his parents could owl over new ones, and when he bitched to Slughorn about wanting a nice, clean copy of _Drafts_ instead of the janky one he'd wound up with, Slughorn put two and two together and contacted the publisher. Wish this edition had been around three years ago, but merp, better late than never.

I go say hi to Slughorn when class is over to ask if he's got some time to kill—I haven't really properly sat down with him since third year, and I could use some decompression with the whole McLaggen business going on and being cooped up with Mol and the ancestors the last two months before school and just all of it. "Certainly, m'lady!" he says with a big belly laugh, and that's how I wind up plunked in a fat armchair in his office, nursing a butterbeer and venting about the ancestors.

"Oh, my dear girl," tuts Slughorn, gulping down the last of his mead and reaching behind him to pour another glass. "You'll push through it as long as you keep your chin up. You're a true Slytherin, Lucy, and I don't say that lightly! You're an ambitious witch, and I assure you you're going to go far with it and not feel so pent up for much longer."

"I dunno, Professor," I say. "Am I, do you think? Do you really? Because it's great here, because I don't have to put any airs on and I've got you—" Slughorn beams at me "—but I've never given enough shits—whoops, I mean—never cared to bother much with classes or anything, and just there's so much I want to do that I wish I could handle with spelling and everything, and if I can't live up to that, then what's the point of going green, you know? What was the point of becoming _that Weasley_ in the family when I could have just…"

He kicks his feet up onto a footstool and shakes his head at me with a small smile. "Oho, but that's everything. You've got your cousin Potter now to keep you company, isn't that right? Timid thing—can't say I quite understand how quickly the Hat Sorted the boy—but no matter…"

"But I had a choice. I could have been like my dad-ancestor, you know, I could have not made things so screwy for myself."

"And what you chose was to carve your own ground out. Aspiration isn't always about striving for Outstanding marks, Miss Weasley! It's about striving for what fulfills _you_ , even if that amounts to ignoring what you're told to value. You don't need a N.E.W.T. in Transfiguration to write the spells you want to write—though, like I've always said, I'm sure you'll be up to that task if you choose it—or anyone's approval, not even that of your family."

"They're just… hard."

Slughorn nods. "I hear that, my girl, I hear it, but these things work themselves out in time. Your father reconciled with _his_ family when it was his time, didn't you say so? And though I never taught him to be able to vouch for him—your mother I had for a year, the poor, battered thing. She never did have a talent for Potions—stopped after scraping an Acceptable O.W.L.—and dropped out of Hogwarts entirely a few months into her seventh year. Couldn't recover from the year before, I suppose. I remember seeing her in a corridor once cleaning up some nasty cuts on a first year—but no one could hide that kind of rebellion from the Carrows for long… She was a good witch. That ought to count for something—and with her daughter, no less."

 _Battered_ 's a good word for the mum-ancestor, I can tell you that. I think she makes herself small in some big effort to get people not to stare at the scars and stuff—like that makes her so unusual when they're not half as deep as the ones on Uncle Bill's face, like the rest of the world's going to slow down to pay her any attention just because she can't keep up. She'll be sitting there at tea trying to hunch her shoulders over as much as possible and flinching a little anytime anybody tries to talk to her, even though it's usually just Aunt Ginny trying to be nice or the dad-ancestor asking if she can pass the biscuits. I hate her, except I don't, except really I do.

I wonder if sometimes _battered_ 's a good word for me, too—only in ways I don't think Slughorn's ever going to see.


End file.
